Now Antarctic rescue ship threatened by ice

Friday

Jan 3, 2014 at 4:12 PMJan 3, 2014 at 9:35 PM

By Edward Wong THE NEW YORK TIMES

BEIJING — One day after a Chinese icebreaker played a central role in the rescue of 52 passengers from an icebound research vessel in Antarctica, crew members on the Chinese ship said it might itself become trapped by ice, according to Australian officials Friday.

A helicopter from the Chinese vessel, the Snow Dragon, was part of a dramatic operation Thursday that displayed unusual international harmony in one of the world's most remote and inhospitable places, plucking the passengers from a makeshift landing zone on the ice near the Russian research ship that had been lodged in ice for more than a week.

Images of the passengers being rescued from the Akademik Shokalskiy showed them smiling as they walked single file to a landing area on the ice that had been cleared by passengers and crew members. Other images on the Internet showed crew members hauling sleds laden with luggage.

The red-and-white Chinese helicopter transported the scientists, tourists and journalists to a waiting Australian icebreaker, the Aurora Australis, which had been expected to head to Australia's island state of Tasmania and arrive there with its new passengers by mid-January.

But on Friday, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which has been managing the rescue, said it had been told by the crew of the Snow Dragon that the vessel could become icebound and that the Aurora Australis had been placed on standby in open water to help. The Chinese crew members had "concerns about their ability to move through heavy ice in the area," the authority said.

The Snow Dragon, or Xue Long in Chinese, said it would try to move through the ice when tidal conditions were suitable early Saturday, the Australian authority said in a statement on its website.

The 22 crew members of the Russian ship have said they will stay on board and attempt to sail the ship away from Antarctica when the ice eases.

The 233-foot blue-hulled research ship has been stuck fast since Dec. 24 near Cape de la Motte, about 1,700 miles south of Hobart, Tasmania. The ice is so thick that previous attempts to rescue the passengers using ice-breaking vessels failed.